A/N: I just want to again quickly thank everyone who's been so patient waiting for updates for this story, I know it's frustrating waiting so long between chapters but your continued support means so much. I don't have much of my final semester left, so I'm hoping the next few updates won't take as long!
"I officially have nothing to wear." Alison stands with her hands on her hips, staring down with despair at pretty much the entire contents of her closet, strewn haphazardly across her bed. "Nothing."
"Uh…" Matt's voice comes from the corner, where he's leaning back against her desk and looking at her with concern. "I'm pretty sure you have about a thousand things to wear."
"But none of them are suitable!" She snaps back, and his eyes widen in alarm and she immediately curses herself because he's just trying to help and she doesn't need to be a bitch to the one person in town who's thus far yet to see that side of her. "Sorry."
"It's alright," he says with a bemused smile, shaking his head. "First date jitters, I get it. Although is there really any reason for you to be nervous? I mean, you already know the girl. You've already told her you love her. I'm pretty sure the date should be the easiest part."
"But it's not!" She cries in exasperation, throwing herself down on the edge of her bed and suddenly finding herself blinking back tears. "It has to be perfect."
"Ali," Matt murmurs gently as he moves to sit beside her, an arm sliding around her back, the warmth of it comforting. "You need to stop putting so much pressure on this, because if you force it, you're not going to have a good time. And I think, after everything, you deserve a good time, okay? So just… relax."
"Have you met me? Impossible."
"Just try. I just don't get why you're so worked up. It's not like you've never been alone with her before."
"But it's different," she insists, though she knows from the look on his face that he'll never understand what she means – and how could he? He knows barely any of the history between her and Emily, nothing of the weight that she feels rests on her shoulders because of their past.
And she knows that it's stupid, because it's just Emily, the girl who knows her better than anyone else – the one person that she feels safe with. But she's still so scared – terrified – of messing this up before it's even begun. She's so scared that Emily will change her mind, will remember the horrible way that Alison had treated her in the past, and run for the hills.
It's irrational, she knows, because Emily's had a million chances to run (and a million reasons to), but she hasn't gone anywhere. And she knows she needs to stop thinking that the brunette will leave her at the first sign of trouble because it's not healthy, for either of them, but she's just… ever since Emily had asked her on their official first date two days ago she's been living in a constant state of panic.
It doesn't help that she has no idea where they're going – Emily had insisted that she be the one to plan the whole thing, had given Alison zero hints about what they might be doing ever since she'd asked, and it's been driving her insane.
Even the other girls had sworn that they had no idea (and it had killed Alison, a little, when she'd caved and asked them at lunch earlier that day when Emily had slipped away to the bathroom). Things are a little better between them, now – not great, because she knows it will take a lot of work to get back to good terms, but better. She no longer spends her lunch hour hiding in the library, instead enjoys the time with her girlfriend (and she's still not used to that, to Emily officially being hers) and their friends, and she's… she's indescribably happy, for maybe the first time in her life, and everything would be perfect if Emily would just tell her where the hell she was being taken that night.
She'd called Matt freaking out nearly an hour ago and he'd been at her door less than five minutes later (and she loves him for it), hadn't uttered a word of complaint when Alison had dragged him upstairs to help her find something to wear.
"Did she not even give you a hint of where you're going?" Matt's voice breaks her out of her thoughts, and she rises to her feet to eye her wardrobe critically once more.
"She said 'to make sure to dress warm'. What the hell does that even mean? And how am I supposed to look cute when I've got, like, three layers on?!"
"Ali, you'd look cute whatever you were wearing – and I'm sure Emily would think you looked smoking if you were wearing nothing but a plastic bag, okay? But why don't we start with…" He trails off, coming to stand beside her and frowning down at the clothes thrown across her bed. "These." He grabs a pair of black skinny jeans and Alison nods in approval before reaching out to grab a white top to pair with them – it has the type of plunging neckline that she knows will make Emily lose her mind (and really, that's the only thing she wants from tonight – she's barely seen the brunette over the last couple of days, apart from at school, and there's nothing more than she wants than the feeling of Emily's mouth against hers and the brunette's hands on her skin).
"Yeah?" She asks Matt as she holds the top against her frame, and he grins as he nods.
"I don't know about cute – but you'll definitely pass for hot, that's for sure." He kisses her cheek with a murmured 'please stop worrying and just enjoy tonight' into her ear before he leaves her to it, disappearing through her bedroom door. A moment after he's gone, Pepe, who had seen the start of her breakdown and had quickly left the room, pokes his head through the doorway and, deciding it's safe, pads into the room with a wagging tail.
"Hey sweetheart." She bends to run a hand across his head – something about him never fails to calm her down – and he licks her cheek before darting away to curl up on the blanket she's set aside for him beside her bed, resting his head on his paws and closing his eyes (she's jealous – she wishes she could sleep as easily as him, sometimes).
She spends the next hour or so getting ready, making sure her make-up's picture perfect before slipping out of her the dress she'd worn for school and into the clothes she'd picked up (fighting the urge to yank them back off and finding something completely different as soon as she catches sight of herself in the mirror – only Matt's voice, telling her to enjoy herself, makes her pause, and she tells herself that Emily will love her whatever she's wearing). She's just slipped into a pair of boots when her phone chimes with a text, and her eyes light up when she sees Emily's name on the screen, a split second before the doorbell below rings – she's so excited by the thought of seeing the brunette that she barely has a second to panic about whether she looks okay as she slips into a coat and bounds down the stairs, Pepe on her heels.
Emily stands in the hall with her hands buried in the pockets of her jacket, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, making awkward small talk with Alison's dad – she finds it ironic, that the first time he's been home early on a Friday night was the one time she actually has plans. He'd had the audacity to ask her if she could move things to another night so they could spend together – she'd snapped that maybe if he made more of an effort to actually be there for more than an hour a day that she wouldn't have to re-arrange anything, and things had been strained between them since.
Strained enough that she hadn't yet found the opportunity to tell him about Emily. And it's not that she doesn't want to, because there is no part of her that wants to hide her relationship, that wants to hide Emily from the world – she wants everyone to know how much she loves her, because she's kept it hidden for so long. She just… doesn't quite know how to find the words, how to tell the man that she feels like she barely knows but who is her flesh and blood that she's dating another woman. And it's not that she thinks he'd have a problem with it – she doesn't know how he'll react but she knows that, whatever happens, it won't change things between her and Emily.
She'd warned Emily about that, promising that she'd tell him whenever the opportunity had arose – but the brunette had just pressed a chaste kiss against her lips and murmured that she didn't have to rush anything, that she could tell her dad whenever she was ready, and Alison was pretty sure that she'd fallen even more in love with her.
Emily's eyes rise to meet hers as Alison makes her way down the stairs, and she watches the way the brunette's gaze runs over her frame appreciatively before she's distracted by Pepe nudging at her leg, desperate for attention from his favourite human (Alison had come to begrudgingly accept that she came second whenever Emily was around – and really, she couldn't blame him), and Emily bends to rub a hand affectionately across his back.
"Hey," Alison greets as she comes to stand beside the brunette, and she wants nothing more, as she eyes the way that Emily's jeans hug her figure, than to shove her back against the wall behind her and kiss her senseless – and maybe it's a good thing that her dad is hovering in the background, because if not they might end up never leaving the house.
"Hey," Emily returns, and the smile that lights up her face is the most beautiful thing that Alison's ever seen. "Are you ready to go?"
"Mhm." She slides a hand through the crook of Emily's arm and squeezes gently, and she turns to glance back at her dad over her shoulder. "I'll be back before eleven."
"Okay," he nods to himself, and Emily opens the front door after giving Pepe one last pat. "You girls have fun."
"Oh, we plan to," Alison mutters under her breath as she, too, rubs Pepe's head before slipping out the front door, and Emily lets out a breathless laugh when she hears the blonde's words.
"Oh we do, do we?"
"Mhm." She slides into the passenger seat of the brunette's car, and as soon as Emily is beside her she leans across and presses their lips together, sighing in contentment at the feeling – she really hasn't gotten to do this enough over the last few days. "I missed you," she murmurs against Emily's mouth when they part, and the brunette laughs softly before pressing one last kiss to her lips and leaning away to start the car.
"You just saw me, like..." Emily pauses to glance at the clock on her dashboard. "Three hours ago."
"Not like this," Alison points out, sliding a hand across the console to rest on the brunette's upper thigh – Emily shoots her a warning glance before setting off, and the blonde just looks back at her innocently. "What?"
"You better move that hand because my plans for the evening don't include crashing the car because you were distracting me."
"You find this distracting?" She trails her fingertips teasingly higher, until they rest almost at the crease of the brunette's jeans, and she hears Emily's sharp intake of breath and smirks.
"Jesus, Alison, are you trying to kill me?" Emily's hands clutch the steering wheel so hard that her knuckles flash white, and Alison slides her hand away and back into her own lap.
"Consider that payback for not telling me anything about what we're doing tonight."
"If that's payback then maybe I should withhold information more often," the brunette mutters under her breath, but Alison still hears and smiles to herself. "And I wanted to surprise you."
"I don't like surprises," she replies immediately, because it's true and she knows that Emily knows that.
"You'll like this one," the brunette promises, and Alison's sure that she will because it means getting to spend time with her girlfriend alone but that's not the point.
"Are you seriously not going to tell me where we're going?" She can't resist asking after a few moments of comfortable silence, broken only by the quiet sound of Emily humming along to the song playing on the radio (a habit that Alison has always secretly found adorable).
"You'll find out soon enough," comes Emily's cryptic reply, and she pointedly ignores Alison's pout, her lips twitching into a smile as she keeps her eyes fixed solidly on the road in-front of her. When they turn on the freeway Alison's interest is piqued – she'd assumed that they'd be going somewhere nearby, but then she thinks of how long Emily's been waiting for this night (how long they've both been waiting for this night), and wonders if the brunette's got something a little more elaborate planned.
She gives up trying to wheedle information out of the brunette and instead keeps up a steady stream of conversation, revelling in how easy it feels to be with her, and enjoying every second, her earlier anxiety drifting away with every mile they travel.
When Emily leaves the freeway Alison perks up, glancing around them with renewed interest, the sound of Emily's light laughter ringing in her ears – they stop before she sees a sign, the brunette pulling into a busy parking lot at what looks like a park, and when Emily unclips her seatbelt she grins at Alison's confusion.
"You'll see if you come with me," is the mysterious answer to the question that Alison hadn't voiced, before she's slipping out of the car and leaving the blonde to scramble after her. Emily's waiting by the passenger door, a picnic basket held in one hand that has Alison raising an eyebrow.
"It's a little dark for a picnic, isn't it?"
"Kinda has to be, for this one." Emily takes her hand and leads her to the side, and Alison's confusion only grows with every step that they take, and it's all she can do to bite her tongue and not demand to know where they're going.
The path they take is lined with trees, and when it ends they fall away to reveal a field dotted with people sitting on blankets, all facing towards a large movie screen that's been set up at the bottom, and a soft gasp falls from her lips at the sight because of all the scenarios that had flashed through her mind ever since she'd gotten into the brunette's car, this hadn't been one of them.
"If you hate it we can go home. I just… I know you love old movies and when I saw that they were putting on an outdoor cinema I thought it'd be a good idea, but - " Alison cuts short the brunette's rambling by turning to her and pressing a bruising kiss to her lips, sliding her tongue into Emily's mouth and groaning at the feeling.
"It's perfect," she breathes when they part, and when Emily's eyes flutter open she's relieved to see that the worry has fled them to be replaced by warmth, instead. "You're perfect. I love you."
"I love you, too." Emily brushes another kiss against her mouth before pulling her to one side and setting the picnic blanket down, pulling out a blanket from within and spreading it across the grass before dropping down onto it and patting the space next to her. Alison sinks down beside the brunette and shuffles so that she's pressed against her side.
"What were you gonna do if it was raining?" She asks as one of Emily's hands wraps around her back to drag her even closer, her mouth pressing against her cheek – she feels the curve of the brunette's smile against her skin.
"There's a restaurant in Philly that I've been wanting to go to for a while, but I thought this would be more your style."
"What's that supposed to mean?" She knows Emily's teasing and feigns her own outrage, leaning back to glare playfully back at the other woman, who only smiles wryly.
"That all you used to talk about whenever you started to date someone new was that the first date had to be absolutely perfect because it set up the entire relationship?" Alison opens her mouth to disagree (even though it's true – she had used to say that, a lot), but Emily speaks before she has the chance. "And you love old movies and you love picnics and parks are romantic and we had a hell of a lot of kisses in one, so. I chose this over the fancy restaurant, which is probably like every first date you've ever been on."
"Pretty much," she agrees, unable to stop her glare from softening at Emily's words. "Guys aren't exactly the most imaginative, after all. But this is… amazing." She glances around them, takes it all in – the stars shining in the sky above them, the haunting beauty of the moon, the sound of the wildlife around them mixed with the low chatter of people – and smiles. "And you should've known that there was no pressure on this. Not from me. It would've been perfect either way."
"So you're telling me that you weren't worrying about this night at all?"
"No," she answers immediately, her smile growing as she remembers the way she'd acted around Matt earlier. "I called Matt freaking out and now I'm pretty sure he thinks I'm a crazy person and won't wanna see me ever again."
"I'm sure he understands," Emily replies with a laugh. "And hopefully Hanna does, too."
"You called Hanna?" It's not that she's surprised that she was the one that Emily had turned to, because she knows that out of the girls, the blonde is the one that Emily has always been closest to; she's just surprised that Hanna had actually been willing to help.
"Well, no. She's still not a hundred percent okay with this - "
"And she wouldn't be Hanna if she was," Alison cuts in, because she knows it's true. She still has a long way to go before she can make up for her past mistakes, and she knows that a big part of that is just time. Time to show that she has changed, that she doesn't have any ulterior motives – that the girl she is now, the side of herself that she's showing, is who she really is because for the first time in her entire life, she's not worried about being vulnerable anymore.
Not in-front of Emily, who makes her feel safe in just the way she looks at her, with eyes so full of warmth and love, so much that it steals the breath from her lungs and leaves her dizzy. And not in-front of the other girls, either – because she's been to hell and back, and she knows that if she can survive that, then she can deal with anything else… as long as Emily's by her side.
"True," Emily admits with a nod. "But she's still Hanna, and she's still my friend, and she knew how crazy I'd be going so she turned up on my doorstep without me even having to ask and didn't leave until I did. She told me to tell you that my outfit is all thanks to her."
"Well I can't really see much of it…" She trails off, raising an eyebrow in the hint of suggestion, and Emily's smirk makes her mouth go dry.
"Well, if you play your cards right… you might get a glimpse later." The comment has her head spinning, because it's so unlike the Emily she'd used to know, who'd been so scared and so timid that she could barely even kiss the blonde without blushing, that her mind is over-run for a moment, and suddenly the movie feels very insignificant when she and Emily could be spending this time making out in the back of the brunette's car. "And that may be the first time I've ever made you speechless."
"If you keep coming out with comments like that it probably won't be the last time." Alison's amazed that her voice doesn't shake, and decides that now would be a good time to change the subject, otherwise all she's going to be able to think about for the rest of the night is Emily Fields' sinful mouth. "What's in the basket?"
"You hungry?" Alison makes a noise of agreement and Emily shifts to drag the basket closer, slipping the lid open and pulling out several containers. "Okay, it's been a while since we ate together anywhere other than school so I had to guess what to bring. But I figured a salad was a safe option, and I'm hoping that you're still a fan of all the things you used to be."
Alison is stunned to find that Emily's remembered all of the things she'd used to love, back before her life had gone to hell, and she's embarrassed to feel tears stinging behind her eyes at the thought, and it's then that Emily turns to catch a glimpse of her expression and the smile drops from her face as she moves so that she's kneeling beside the blonde, one hand cupping the side of her face and concern lining her face.
"Hey, what's wrong? I mean, sometimes food makes me really emotional when I'm hungry, but…" The brunette tries to joke, and it's enough for Alison to blink back her tears before any can fall, and she swears that she never used to be emotional and stupid.
"I'm sorry," she murmurs as Emily's thumb brushes delicately across her cheek. "I just… I can't believe you remembered so much."
"I remember everything about you," is Emily's soft reply, her hand curling around the back of the blonde's neck as she rests their foreheads together, her breath hot against Alison's lips. "Everything. How could I not? After that summer I replayed every moment we ever had together, over and over again because I didn't want to forget a second."
"I re-read my diary every night before I went to sleep because I thought that if I did, when I closed my eyes I'd be able to be with you again." It's not something she's ever admitted to her before, but for a long time it had been her ritual – until she'd realized that it hadn't worked, that no matter how much she read about the brunette, Emily rarely haunted her dreams. Only the memories of all the mistakes she's made featured in her nightmares – even now, sometimes she still wakes in the middle of the night, soaked with sweat and shivering from fear with tears dried on her face. "I'm sorry for everything I put you through."
"I know you are. I know." Emily's mouth presses against hers and silences anything else she may have said, and she loses herself in the kiss, her hands reaching out to settle on Emily's hips, sliding beneath her jacket and the shirt underneath to settle against the heat of her bare skin, and she itches to slide them higher, to feel more of Emily beneath her fingertips, and she's never wanted someone this much before in her life and the need to be closer is both terrifying and exhilarating.
Emily's hands tangle in her hair, holding her close, and Alison loses all sense of where they are when the brunette's tongue tangles with hers, kissing her deeper, and all she wants is for Emily to press her back and make her forget her own name – and it's only the sound of the movie rumbling to life in-front of them that snaps them both to their senses.
When Emily pulls away from her, her eyes are dark with want, her cheeks flushed and her breathing heavy, and she looks at Alison like she wants to drag her home to bed right then and there – and if she asks Alison's not sure that she'd be able to bring herself to disagree, because god, she wants her so much that she can barely think of anything else.
"You are going to be the death of me," the brunette murmurs as she settles back down beside the blonde, till trying to catch her breath, and Alison has to agree. She snuggles into Emily's side as the movie starts to play (not one that she's seen before), and picks at the feast that the brunette's provided. When they're both finished eating Emily packs everything away and pulls out another blanket, draping it over their legs and Alison wonders how she's ever going to top this night, because every part of it's been perfect – and she's never felt quite as content as she does in that moment, with Emily's arm wrapped tightly around her, a solid warmth at her side.